The Seattle Kraken are set to sign Brandon Montour, one of the top defensemen on the free agent market, to a seven-year, $50 million contract, as reported by Pierre Lebrun of The Athletic.
Montour, 30, had a career year in 2022-23 with the Florida Panthers, racking up an impressive 73 points (16 goals, 57 assists) in 80 games. He missed the beginning of the 2023-24 season after offseason shoulder surgery, but still posted 33 points (8-25=33) in 66 games and added three goals and eight assists in the postseason, helping the Panthers win the Stanley Cup. Despite the injury and late start, he maintained a significant role, averaging over 23 minutes of ice time.
Originally from Ohsweken, Ontario, and a member of the Mohawk First Nations of the Grand River community, Montour was drafted by the Anaheim Ducks in the second round of the 2014 NHL Draft. After stints with Anaheim and Buffalo, he was traded to the Panthers in April 2021, where he became a key cog and a power play quarterback.
Montour is known for his offensive prowess, compete level, speed, and ability to creatively distribute with the manpower advantage, which addresses several areas of need for Seattle.
How Montour fits
I did surmise a while back on the Sound Of Hockey Podcast that the Kraken might consider looking to improve offensively by adding an offensive defenseman. But after plenty of discussion about it, we decided they would focus on adding scoring forwards, so admittedly, we did not see this signing coming.
This acquisition dramatically changes the look of Seattle’s defense corps. It does bring right-shot/left-shot balance again, but it also creates several new questions. Does Montour box out Ryker Evans from a full-time role next season? Does Brian Dumoulin get pushed out of the lineup? Or, is there another move coming that would make the existing pieces fit?
Here’s how things could theoretically shape up, if there isn’t a subsequent defense move coming.
Vince Dunn // Adam Larsson
Jamie Oleksiak // Brandon Montour
Brian Dumoulin // Will Borgen
Ryker Evans
I only put Montour on the second pairing because I’m not a fan of having two offensive defensemen playing together, hence why I would leave Vince Dunn and Adam Larsson together.
Cap situation
In terms of salary cap management, Montour becomes the second-highest-paid player on the team after Vince Dunn’s $7.35 million AAV. By total dollars, it is the biggest contract on the Kraken and the largest deal ever signed by general manager Ron Francis.
According to Cap Friendly, the Kraken currently have $16.28 million in cap space before factoring in new deals for Matty Beniers and Eeli Tolvanen, who both received qualifying offers on Sunday. If those two take up, say, $10-$11 million (that’s a total guess) of the remaining space, that leaves Seattle with approximately $5-$6 million to strengthen its forward group. That’s not nearly enough to upgrade up front, so we have to think there’s a trade or two coming to create some additional room.
This is a huge deal for the Kraken to dish out, no question, especially considering that Montour will be 37 years old when this contract ends, and it more than doubles his previous $3.5 million cap hit. But, that’s the cost of doing business in unrestricted free agency. If you want to make a splash, you have to overpay.
Stay tuned. This could be an exciting day.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
I haven’t had more than ten minutes to analyze this, but my gut is telling me RF missed the mark by a lot. We need scoring forwards, and he signs a D-man who is already 30 years old, coming off a couple of really strong years with a cup contender/champion, which probably boosted his stats and apparent value. Sound familiar?? it sure seems like RF fell into the Grubauer trap, again.
As a recovered Hawks fan, this is giving me flashbacks of the Brent Seabrook contract, which was widely panned as one of if not the worst contract in the league for years. The only hope is that this Montour contract becomes an albatross for a mere three years, and not more. Yeesh.
30 isn’t old, especially for a defenseman.
If he were 28, I would love this signing. Hopefully by time he is in his mid to late 30’s hockey revenue and cap will have increased significantly.
Like you foreshadow, I hope they are able to move one of their defensemen in a fair trade. They need the cap to add at least one 20+ goal scoring wing.
I am curious what everyone thinks. In my eyes this trade is a small net negative based on his age and cap hit. It’s close though. You can only sign the players looking to come to your team, if top offensive talent isn’t willing to come this year, better to lock up what talent you can.
Exciting day it would have been but not now. This signing, shows the weakness of Ron Francis. We have no scorers and with Eberle and Burkowski getting older as well and numbers deminishing, we need to score to win. What kind of scorer are we going to get for just 5 or 6 mil. The kids are too young to make an impact.
I think there’s more to come…
I like many others definitely thought Seattle would leave the defense corps alone and use their cap space to go after forward upgrades, but after seeing so much of the top forward talent fly off the board before free agency even opened, I guess that wasn’t an option. Montour should help out the offense in a different way though, quarterbacking one of the power play units and carrying the puck up the ice into the offensive zone. He’s no slouch on defense, either. I would have wanted either a lower cap hit or less term, but this is free agency, so an overpay is to be expected. I do like Montour as a player, though, so in that sense I’m happy he’s a member of the Kraken now.
I mostly agree with your defensive pairings, Darren, though I would like to see Evans win that 3LD spot over Dumoulin. We’ll see what happens there.
With all the top free agent forwards headed elsewhere, I’m wondering if a trade for a top-six forward is in the works. Seems like the most viable way for Seattle to add some more punch on offense at this point.
Something I forgot to add in my initial comment: I’d be curious to know the reasons behind Montour’s sudden spike in point production in 2022-23, when he put up 73 points, compared to 37 in 2021-22 and 33 this past season. Most of the discrepancy is in assist numbers. Is the difference down to random variance in other players finishing/not finishing chances, or is there something else at play? I don’t expect Montour to hit 73 points again, but if he can split the difference in point production between that one big season and the two sandwiching it, I think this signing would look much much better.
One thing that might’ve contributed to improvement… Maurice.
He was playing on a completely stacked roster, and he started to get more TOI and power play time in ’22-’23. I wouldn’t hold your breath for him to reach those kind of point levels with the Kraken, especially without a big forward addition or two. Hard to get assists when the puck doesn’t go in the net.
Don’t fully get this one, although I like the player and think he does make the team better. The term makes it a little more clear why there wasn’t the same urgency to draft a defenseman than most of us expected. It also seems clear that they may have a bigger plan none of us anticipated with more big moves to come. I hope that’s the case.
I actually think this makes not taking a defenseman even worse. Three of their top four defensemen are over 30. Larsson is up after next season, he’ll be 32. Oleksiak is the year after, he’ll be 33. Nobody in the pipeline to replace those guys.
I can’t remember where, but I read this take somewhere yesterday and was intrigued.
I definitely don’t hate it.
I think the player to watch now is Borgen. I do think teams like him and he could well be the ask in deal. One year to UFA…
Montour was my number 1 get in free agency. Will help with power play, if Dunn gets hurt again we’ll still have an offensive D to run things. We were rumored to be in for Karlsson last year so it was an area that Francis found to be important. Very happy.
Excellent point. Things really went downhill with Dunn out of the lineup.
I would agree with that…. when Dunn went down, the offense (what there was of it) just fell off a cliff because none of the other D are true puck movers. Maybe Evans gets there but he wasn’t ready for that yet. Montour certainly helps so that there isn’t just one Dman that can help the offense. Should help the PP a lot.
Term sucks on this but every year teams get out of the last years of these long UFA contracts. Scared money doesn’t win. Five years probably doesn’t get the signature.
I’m not surprised they went for a RHD… the idea of having Evans or Dumoulin playing on their off hand just was not a recipe for success.
Seems imperative to move Dumoulin now and clear that $3.5 mil off the books. Probably will need to give a pick to get rid of him (if they are content with Evans at 3LD).
It doubles his previous salary but is in line with current value (per JFresh and the Athletic) and in line with contract projections.
Also, we have 3 defensemen with expiring contracts this year.
Chandler Stevenson for 7 years! Also 30 years old, only topped 20 goals once. Hmm.
I hope his linemates really sucked, that -9 +- really sticks out on a winning team. The deal for Stevenson looks like a desperate overpay at 6+mil per year to me. Ugh.
This signing also gives me the vibe that they players they wanted didn’t want to play here. At least I hope they weren’t looking to spend that much on a guy that doesn’t put the puck in the net very often.
I was down on Debrusk as a FA who also got 7 years, but at a cheaper $5.5M. He’s not a center, but he’s also topped 20 goals multiple times. Where will the goals come from?? Plus why are we signing 30 year olds to seven year deals when our window doesn’t really open for another 2-3 years when these players will likely be declining? Makes no sense to me.
I agree wholeheartedly. Signing players who will be good now, but burdens later makes zero sense for a team with young talent, but little to no chance to win it all now.
My opinion of management has taken a big hit today. I feel like RF is desperate to get wins next year and sold out the future to produce a mediocre+ squad. This move makes both moves worse as they both share the same problem. Hate it, hate it, hate it.
Maybe they’ll be more watchable next year, at least. I definitely like Stephenson over Wennberg (who is still available, his NY tenure tanked his value IMO). Gourde’s play took a nosedive last year so he’ll probably be relegated to 4th line duties. They still need to trade Tanev and replace with a competent scoring winger.
Wow, the consensus seems to be that the Stephenson signing was awful. I didn’t know much about his tenure in Vegas, but apparently all his metrics took a huge hit last year even with Mark Stone on his line. He could already be on the decline. Seven years! Yeesh.
Of the available centers… I think this is probably the one they wanted.
Right-shot defenceman… check.
Middle-six center… check.
Top-six right wing… TBD.
In 6 or 7 years, I wonder what percent of the cap Montour and Stephenson will collectively take up. Whatever it is, I bet it’s an amount that will handicap the team for several years.
Nečas and Ellerslie are still out there…
Yes, they need to make a trade, then I’ll consider the day a success.
GD spell correct!!!
Ehlers.
FWIW… with Guentzel signing with Tampa last night, when free agency opened, Seravalli and Daily Faceoff had Montour and Stephenson No.4 and No.5 respectively on their free agent board.
If Schwartz, Gourde and Tanev are on their way out, the Montour + Chandler Stephenson signings will be a lateral cap move where we end up 2-3 years younger.
Goyette, Firkus, Wright, and Nelson are all 20 years old. Rehkopf and Jani Nyman are 19, Catton is 18.
Concerns that these deals are going to affect our championship window are overblown. These 7-year deals will be at their end by the time we’re looking to contend, and what are 7%/8% of the cap deals now will be 5.5%/6.3%** then (the equivalent of 4.8M/5.5M contracts today). Those may end up being buyouts, but they aren’t going to hold us back.
**Assumes a +$4M cap increase annually going forward
“These 7-year deals will be at their end by the time we’re looking to contend…”
I was hoping we’d be looking to contend earlier than 2030…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ if we’re expecting to contend when our prospects are getting towards the end of their first major deals, that’ll be the 2029/30 season and beyond.
As mentioned in my other comment below, I also don’t expect these kinds of deals to actually be completely played out. There’re only a dozen players who are 37+ years old in the league. No reason to expect Montour and Stephenson to still be playing by then. Buying out their last couple years (assuming a contract restructure after the age of 35 as according to the CBA), retaining some salary in a trade, or an LTIR designation (in the event of injury or retirement) would all decrease or eliminate the impact of their contract on the team’s cap situation.
I figure our contention window would be starting around the time all the high round picks we have made the last few years are in the league and on cheap deals. I picture that window as starting in about 3-4 years.
7 years from now many of the extra high round picks we currently have in the pipeline will be looking for second contracts (or busts). I believe the team will be past what I consider the most logical window of contention 7 years from now. Why do you see a window beginning 7+ years out?
What do you consider a “cheap deal”? Do you mean still on their $900K entry-level contracts? Those will all be expired at the end of the 2025/26 season except for Sale, Molgaard and Dragicevic, who will slide unless they play 10 games. I don’t know if I expect any prospects other than Evans and Wright to be meaningful contributors on their ELCs. If you mean their first deals with 3-4yr term and lower wage ($2-4M AAV), those deals should last into the 2028/29 or 2029/30 years for all prospects besides Sale, Molgaard and Dragicevic. That’s where I picture our window starting, a year or two after you do, in about 4-6 years.
When I said “These 7-year deals will be at their end”, I meant ~5 years from now when they still have a year or two left on their deal but are extremely unlikely to actually be played out. They could end up being bought out, traded at a deadline (they’ll be a cheaper cap hit by % at that point and we might retain), or put on LTIR.
So yes, these deals will still be on the books when our window starts, but I don’t think they’ll be relevant by the time our window ends, and certainly not an insurmountable handicap during it. The cap hits will not be percentage-wise near the top of the team.
I mean both the ELC and that first 3-4 year contract. Thank you for the better numbers/years, I only had a rough idea.
Going by what you said here, I would say their current logical window will end somewhere around 2028-2030. Currently it seems like a lot of players could be plugged in from our prospect pipeline and be paid “cheap” deals allowing flexibility to fill the roster out with them and some high end players.
That 2028-2030 is when I expect maximum suckage from the Montour and Stephenson contracts. They handcuffed the future for returns now, when the team is unlikely to be a legit Cup contender. That to me is a desperate move to save a job and appease wishy-washy fans. I hate it.
Great signing. Montour will be a great leader on D (which we lacked) and a top fixture in the locker room for years to come. Kraken won’t waste him with an Oleksiak pairing. Evans will likely benefit the most from this signing, as it will elevate his game and confidence to a new level.
Dunn – Larsson
Evans – Montour
Oleksiak – Borgen
Oleksiak is a P3 D at best, but he’s fine on the PK. Seattle may try to get rid of Dumoulin somehow, or keep him to fill in for Oleksiak when Bylsma inevitably healthy scratches him for making too many terrible D zone decisions.
We are all so used to the Dunn-Larson pairing that we take it as a given, but, with a new coach coming in, it may be time to break them up. Besides, when they were initially paired together back in Season One, it was to allow the young, unrefined Vince Dunn to learn how to play like a top defenseman from the savvy veteran Larson. As great as the pairing still is, Dunn’s game is now well-polished, and he no longer needs the veteran tutelage. On the other hand, sharing a line with Adam Larson would conceivably be an absolute godsend to a young guy like Ryker Evans who looked less than confident in his game last year both in Seattle and in Palm Desert. Ryker could use some of that bowl-cut confidence.
Update on the defense front: Brian Dumoulin has been traded to Anaheim for their 2026 4th round pick. That clears up the minor logjam that was created by signing Montour, paves the way for Evans to have a full-time NHL role next season, and opens up enough breathing room below the cap to sign Matty and Tolvanen while still fielding a full roster. All positives.
Dumo would have been excellent depth, but he was too good and too well compensated to be a 7th/rotational defenseman. Despite Francis’ statements, he was always the most logical trade candidate in my mind. Dumoulin was a good parter and mentor to Evans and will probably fill a similar role in Anaheim. Best of luck to him, except when he’s playing the Kraken of course.